Posted on 07/05/2004 9:38:57 AM PDT by walden
Like most Christians, I study the world around me and try to figure out where we're going, and what my responsibility as a Christian is in this world. Specifically, I see the ominous trend towards acceptance of homosexual marriage, homosexual parenting, pornography of all sorts, legalization of various drugs, etc. and it doesn't appear to me as though Christians are going to be able to stop the relentless march towards an almost completely libertarian society. The truth is that we can't even stop the moral slide downhill within our own churches and it is looking more and more likely that at least some of the mainstream Protestant denominations will split over homosexual issues. Of course, I could be wrong, but the cultural tide does seem to only move in one direction. The Reagan years seemed like a more wholesome retreat from the turmoil and decline of the '70's, but it proved to be only temporary. If I had been told in 1985 that less than 20 years later we would be seriously contemplating allowing homosexuals to marry, that pornography would be widely available on computers in every home, and that we would be struggling to structure and uphold a law that prevented killing full-term babies in utero, I never would have believed it. Yet, that is where we are today.
The one thing I know for sure is that God is in charge here and He does have a plan. And, while He does not cause evil, He does permit it, through our free will. It also seems to me that He has given us three ways of knowing the truth-- empirical evidence, emotional intuition, and scripture. For instance, prior to the "sexual revolution" that began in the 1960's, moral behavior was largely controlled both by law and by social norms (where religious faith was absent), which meant that no one had any empirical evidence that promiscuous sexual behavior was so awful (that's why people could talk about the joys of "free love"). But now, 40 years later, we have an enormous amount of empirical evidence that supports exactly the same moral principals delineated in the bible. We've seen an explosion of STD's of all sorts, many drug-resistant strains, and endless attendant emotional and physical pain and suffering. As it turns out, "free love" carries a huge cost in emotional pain, sterility, chronic disease and death. But, even in the absence of that empirical evidence, and even if we chose to rebel against God and ignore the bible, I think many if not most people realized on an intuitive level that promiscuity just wasn't a good thing. It didn't feel right. (Some paid attention to those feelings, while others chose to ignore them.) The truth is that all three forms of "knowing"-- empirical evidence, emotional intuition, and scripture all lead to the same conclusion, that biblical morality is the way for human beings to live. Some Christians might say that STD's and all the rest are God's judgment on sinners, but I see it in reverse, that scripture is God's warning and instruction that He provides to us out of love. He knows how the natural world works because he made it, and to spare us the suffering of having to discover it for ourselves, He gave us the bible.
But, once the larger society turned away from God and the bible, the libertarian society became inevitable. So, what is our responsibility as Christians in this world? To begin with, I believe that we must speak out against these evils, no matter how futile our efforts are likely to be. But, I think we also need to ALWAYS reflect Christ's love when we do so. Too often, I think, in our fear, we allow ourselves to become too strident, to the point that we are interpreted as "hateful" and our message isn't heard. Even worse, to the extent that we fail to demonstrate Christ's love, we serve as anti-evangelicals, rather than carriers of Christ's promise of redemption and salvation. Beyond that, we must do everything we can to protect our children, which means that parenting will get harder and harder. We will have to be very open and willing to talk to our children about morals, and ready to provide answers to their questions. And, I think that eventually, at least during our child-raising years, Christians will have to more or less draw apart physically from the rest of society, living in separate towns and neighborhoods, sending our children to separate private Christian schools, and being very careful of what we allow in our homes in terms of popular culture-- television, radio, movies, internet, etc.. (Even so, we will lose some of our children.) Such physical separation might also be necessary to protect ourselves from running afoul of "hate speech" laws. And, of course, our most important responsibility is to never lose our faith or our hope, never to despair. We just have to trust in God in all of this.
So, to sum up, it seems to me that we're moving towards greater and greater delineation and clarity between good and evil, God and Satan. It will be absolutely obvious that sin is death, and God is life. It reminds me of doubting Thomas, how he had to see the wounds in the resurrected Christ's hands before he could believe. Well, the libertarian society will bring the doubting Thomases to Christ, and those who, even having seen, refuse to believe, will have chosen their course in the full knowledge of their destination. Maybe that is God's plan.
I agree with you. You raise some very interesting and good points. Look out, however. I foresee loads of attacks on you from libertarians who wrongly believe their personal life choices only affect them and no one else.
Well said, and thanks for saying. I tend to agree.
The types of efforts like the Christian Coalition have largely failed - they can help elect Republicans, but nothing changes - the elected candidates throw, at best, a few crumbs to keep them coming back... they have never (and will never) deliver the real deal. Largely, I believe, because the elected know the CC-types have nowhere else to go.
Recent trends have shown that a traditional family consisting of the same man and same woman that produces children and stays together is becoming a minority. Yet this was not all caused by the secular alternate lifestyle trends. We shouldn't forget what divorce and adultery has done to our society, divorced accepted by the church as being routine, yet often we don't point the finger at these things. Christians ourselves have not been immune to the sexual revolution. Perhaps it really started with the advent of birth control. True there are more options for me as an individual women compared 100 years ago, yet society as a whole has not seemed to use these options to serve God.
Christians are absolutely NOT immune to any form of sin, and I think we're most particularly prone to justifying whatever we feel, regardless of what the bible says. I fell away from faith in my teens (partly rebellion, partly honest doubt) and lived as an agnostic until I was 44 years old. In those years I was divorced twice, so I think I understand something about the dynamic. But, looking back, I see no way that either of those marriages could have succeeded-- in neither case was either one of us Christian. If I had been Christian, even if my husband was not, could Christ have guided me towards making the marriage truly successful, a true Christian marriage? I don't know. But, I am VERY certain now that it is simply not possible for a true Christian marriage to fail. I just don't see how that can happen if both spouses are truly working every day to turn their whole live and behavior towards Christ, to follow Him. If anyone knows of such a marriage that did fail, I would be very interested to hear about it.
The other day my daughter was asking me about my faith, and telling me of some of her experiences with a local church she had visited with a friend and some of the Christian girls she knows at school, and I just had to sigh. Some of these girls thought that all they had to do was to be "saved", and they were fine-- and they just went merrily on their way in their old behaviors-- while others were pretty clearly involved in a wide variety of activities for their church just for show, because it looks good on college applications. I tried to explain to her that these girls were just spiritually immature, and compared them to the spiritually mature members of my own church that she has met (I attend the early service at my church, with a very few nice families, a few middle-aged single people, and a whole lot of the kindest, gentlest old people you will ever meet anywhere. No one would go there for show, as it's absolutely the un-coolest gathering you'll ever see. ;)) And, she agreed that there was a huge difference, but still, a whole lot of supposed Christians are doing the Church a vast disservice by the way they lead their lives.
I will say that after I came to Christ I realized that I couldn't finesse the hard teachings of His gospel. It's either true or it's not, and if it's true, then it's true whether I like it or not. And, to be honest, there are many passages and teachings that I struggle with. But, I realize that my first job is to follow Christ, whether I understand it all or not. The rest can come later, or, if it never does, well that's ok too. Maybe following Him will bring me that understanding. We'll see.
I agree with you that God allows evil, but, being all-knowing of the past, present, and future...doesn't God already know the outcome of our free-will choices?
C.S. Lewis explained it very similarly to how you do. He said that God is outside of time, that all time is present all at once to God. Time as a linear thing, with past, present, and future is something that humans operate inside of and cannot escape, but not so for God. I think that's right.
I think that helps a bit in reconciling our free will with God's omniscience.
So we believe we have free-will, and on our time-plane, we actually do have free-will?...but God already knows what each of us is going to do...our free-will then, would be relative?
I'm not sure what you mean by "relative".
Another way to think of it-- suppose for a moment that God gives you a vision of something that will happen tomorrow to people on the other side of the world. Does your vision interfere with the free will of those people?
Or, think about deja vu. Nobody really has any idea why we get these feelings (for some people, I think they're quasi-visual), but if that sense of deja vu means that you had some foreknowledge, even if you didn't realize it, does that change your free actions in getting to that particular situation?
The problem here is, I think, the concept of God being outside of time. It's easy to say that, but pretty close to impossible, I think, to grasp what it means.
Assuming God truly is outside of time, then....my definition is; relative to your base of measurement...if we take our time-plane...we have free-will...if you go outside our time-plane, ie the one God uses, we don't have free-will. Do we really have it or not, is it all in God's plan?
I personally believe that we certainly think we have free-will, but since God knows all, then He has pre-planned everything, and we are just acting out our part.
Then I must disagree with you. In my view, if we only think we have free will, as opposed to really having it, then Christianity just becomes a giant con game, a fraud. Why should I repent sins that I wasn't really free NOT to commit?
I don't see how that would be a problem. Perhaps what we believe in, is just the way God wanted it...for whatever reason.
If it gives you any encouragement, the cultures that promote the destruction of family, etc. are dying (I wouldn't even describe it as "slowly" anymore); the people who will inherit the earth come from the most traditional cultures on the earth...
They are pouring into the US/Europe everyday, and outbreed the "liberals". Their ideas will live on long after the social liberals have gone the way of the dodo bird.
Many people resent that these newcomers don't assimilate; in light of your concerns, thank God they don't.
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